Woody Allen is considering a return to standup more than 40 years after he gave up touring.

In an interview with Variety, Allen said he had been inspired to pick up the mic again after seeing fellow standup icon Mort Sahl at New York's famous Cafe Carlyle venue last month.

"Mort Sahl is the guy who inspired me to go on stage for the first time in my life, and when I saw him the other night, I had that feeling again of, 'I can do this'," Allen told Variety. "So I thought: 'Gee, it would be nice to get up there and do that again.'"

Allen said he had been putting together notes for a new routine, but admitted he would need an enormous amount of preparation prior to any return to the stage. "It's a lot of work," said the 78-year-old film-maker. "You have to put together an hour of laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh. You can't dawdle. In a film script, if there's a laugh here and there, but people interacting in a meaningful way; it's good. But on stage, you come out and you've got to get a laugh, and then another and another."

Allen, who is currently promoting his latest film – the San Francisco-set Blue Jasmine – also revealed he wrote the film's lead especially for Cate Blanchett, in a departure from his usual process. He said: "She's one of the few actresses, I think, who could do this. It's like having an atomic weapon or something, to get an actress like that."